Maternity leave and service

Case 19: The facts

Ursula Sass brought a claim of sex discrimination because her employer failed to take the whole of her maternity leave period into account when looking at the qualification period for going onto a higher salary grade. The terms of a collective agreement only allowed for the minimum protected period of maternity leave to be taken into account.

The ruling

The ECJ held that the whole of the maternity leave period should have been taken into account, even where the employee had elected to take the longer maternity leave - otherwise a woman who had taken maternity leave would be worse off than a man who started work on the same day.

Land Brandenburg v Sass Case C-284/02